From Michael Crichton, the #1 bestselling author of Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain, comes a devilishly clever, breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems, and genetic ownership shatters our assumptions.

Welcome to our genetic world.

Fast, furious, and out of control.

This is not the world of the future—it's the world right now.

Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blonds becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only four hundred genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction—is it worse than the disease?

We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses for genetic maladies. We live in a time when one-fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else—and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes....

The future is closer than you think.